Neapolitan Like You

Early on Saturday morning I made my way to Bath Railway Station to start a long day which would see me visit Stadium Emirates - home of Walmart Football Club.



I had paid money to Walmart to watch the team in action. Mr. Walmart must be happy as thousands of other fans also put money into his pockets.



The Underground is a useful means of getting around London. When its working. I can only presume that on Saturday there were minor hiccups preventing it from running smoothly.



Getting off at Highbury & Islington left me with the dilemma of how to kill time till the late afternoon kickoff. I decided upon traipsing around Islington to locate a trusty Starbucks to refuel and have some lunch.

Thankfully I made it there safely without being cut in half by one of the 5 Galatasary fans who travelled all the way from their kebab shop on Holloway Road.



On a serious note Galatasary fans are the most loathsome and despicable bunch of supporters in world sport. April 2000: Galatasary fans murdered Leeds' fans Christopher Lofthouse and Kevin Speight (Rest In Peace).

A Fenerbahce fan also lost his life as recently as this May as a result of their evil fanbase. Arsenal Football Club let itself down badly by inviting the Istanbul club to its ground.

It was, contrary to weather forecasts, hot and sunburny at the Emirates. The Walmart players looked like the heat got to them too. Our guests from Naples generously showed us how to score goals and went 2-0 up with Marek Hamsik pulling all the strings.

Ruh-roh!



Thankfully Arsene Wenger jibber-jabbered something in French, Napoli stopped giving the slightest shit and the Walmart scored some goals. 2-2.

It was still hot. If the tube situation was annoying pre-match it was unbelievable afterwards..



By that time I was both tired and grumpy. And ill. A few years later I found myself at Paddington station.

With 2 hours before my return journey I chanced my arm and cheekily asked if I could board an earlier train. I was told I could but that the Station Dobermans would shortly be removing me by my testicles. I calmly withdrew my request.

The eventual train ride home became quite pleasant after Reading station. Most of a busy carriage departed leaving me to drink my smuggled bottle of Sheppys in peace and quiet.

Taking on the system.

Having read and heard about Julian Assange and Edward Snowden in the media, I was aware of individuals who fought bravely against the big machine, but that was as far as it went.

As of this weekend I can say I had my own brush with tyranny. A giant of the blogging world - you could say a Starbucks or Waterstones - has posted the most slanderous rendition of the events of Saturday evening just gone.

Like a loveable old codger going through similar tough times I am considering legal action...



I won't bore you with the gory details, but suffice to say the incident involved a plateful of chicken, a knife and fork and the digestive system that time forgot. Or to be precise - the digestive system that forgot time.

In the story of Rip Van Winkle, he falls asleep and wakes up 20 years later. After sitting down for a meal with Watkins, the Yid and Kitson at Nandos, a similar passage of time elapsed before we left the table.



The libellous account of that evening doing the rounds on the internet ignores a basic principle of law: eyewitnesses. There were 2. Plus me. I am the small bookshop on the corner, the humble coffee shop making a living against a wealthy Superchain.

It is in this spirit of the little guy fighting against the odds that I set things straight and pass judgement on the deception that has spread like napalm. I leave the final word to the judge....

BULLSHIT!

Always Look on the Bright Side of Arsenal

Money money money in the rich man's world. Abba's words sum up Arsenal quite well at present.

Having shown thrift that Scrooge would have admired in recent years, the club is finally shaking of its shackles like some sedated Ogre and whipping into its greedily guarded treasure chest.



£40 million pounds Sterling, oh yes and a pound, for the services of a disreputable Uruguayan by the name of Luis Suarez.



Were this Chelsea, Manchester City or some other club used to throwing notes around like in the Crystal Dome, then the situation would be very familiar.



Biff, Bang, Wallop, How's your father and Suarez is holding up a shirt of the club and posing for photographs.

Its not though, its Arsenal. There's 'Old Money', 'New Money' and now there's Old Money trying to spend New Money.

That is us in a nutshell. Its not our world. And being Arsenal, its not even simple amongst the native fans. A world class player? Here?!

The Seven Seals

To an outsider or tourist Bath looks like a charming, picturesque City totally at peace with itself and those who walk its streets. Or is it..? After hearing harrowing and foreboding tales of a City in turmoil I looked into the claims.

The results of my thorough study of ancient scrolls disturbed me greatly, but in the tradition of Japanese students in horror films I felt it was only right that I share them with you.

So here, authentic and clearly written about 21st century Bath are the Seven Seals...

1) "And yay, there shall be an unpleasant host of aerial bigamists that shall haunt thy city for what seemeth like 4 score and 20 years. There shall be no rest from these winged vermin and the screeching and nashing of thy teeth and much complaining shall follow."

2) "A second plague, unseen by the righteous, shall descend upon thy walls like a very isolated flood. These ants of the earth shall rise up like dragons and fly in an manner that doth pester thee greatly."

3) "The third seal taketh the form of loud noises that keepeth thee from thy slumber. Loud clanging of symbols and clashing of drums shall be a curse especially on thy citizens that haileth from the Orient."

4) "The sun shall shineth like an ball from the depths of Hades and all shall wilt and moan greatly at the warm summer they previously doth covet."

5) "An shop of loweth esteem shall find its way onto thine streets. And lo it shall bring much cursing and displeasure."

6) "A man of the sheep shall make his path into thine sporting establishment and cause much grief and rage in thy taverns."

7) "The birth of an demon child on an day when the sun doth shine increasingly bright shalleth be the seventh and final seal of thy destruction."

Sign in

If such a thing as technological DNA exists then I believe we have handed ours to the world wide web for keeps.

The internet is constantly looking for ways to gather information about all of us. Social network sites, trading websites - be it financial or personal information very little evades the all singing, all dancing spider web that links so many of us to people all over the world.

"Oh bloody hell! He's off on one of his conspiracy rants again.." You think. There's nothing necessarily insidious about the web though. The stockpiling of data is a result, not necessarily the deliberate intention.

The Web is a bit like the Roman Empire. As Monty Python's 'The Life of Brian' facetiously asks: "What have the Romans done for us?" Of course the list is long, but the death and devastation left by their many conquests is likewise considerable.

Obviously the Internet hasn't been directly responsible for lives lost. It is comparable though in that both have facilitated considerable advancement of the human civilization while eroding valuable freedoms (privacy, speech).

"So its ok then? Well what's the point of this shit?" You say. The very same point of the world wide web - advancement. Your advancement. Try and imagine a life less dictated to by the internet.

No, don't cut yourself off from civilization and live in a cage - not unless you have body odour problems. There is so much of the world that has pre-dated our modern age though and will carry on till the world stops spinning. Nature, physical evidence of our history, face-to-face communication for example. Rediscover it, and yourself - step out of the matrix.

Words on canvas

Nostalgia is denial, denial of the painful present.

The Anger Games

The hot topic on everyone's lips at the moment seems to be the Olympics. We're all deciding whether we give the slightest shit about it or not.

I think it'll be interesting mainly to see which countries haven't fallen out with each other by the end. The games haven't even technically started yet and already North Korea has thrown a strop with Scotland and South Korea over the latter's flag flying high over Hampden Park where their ladies were playing football.

Presumably Kim-Jong Un doesn't see the need for a foreign relations minister as one worth their salt would've told him that the last place you want to kick off is Glasgow. "Your nuclear weapons won't wash here pal. What do you think we wear under our kilts?"

Other feisty tête-a-têtes include America v Russia/China, Israel v the rest of the Middle East, and England v pretty much all of Europe. This might go some way to explaining why London looks like Berlin circa 1939 at the moment.

But perhaps the most volatile factor of all is the ever present possibility that Mayor of London Boris Johnson might make comments of a: racist, xenophobic, sectarian, Islamophobic or sexist, (delete as applicable) nature.

And that to me is the perfect justification for flooding the capital with troops, anti-aircraft missiles and a sea of snipers. The troops as protection from some pissed off countries and the snipers to take out Boris.